FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an outline configuration of a conventional video monitoring system. In FIG. 1, the conventional video monitoring system can effectively use transmission capacity within a range not causing congestion in network 14, can cause video monitoring terminal 12 to receive a video signal with a high frame rate as appropriate, and includes a plurality of monitoring camera terminals 11, a plurality of video monitor stations 12, single central monitoring control apparatus 13, and network 14.
Monitoring camera terminal 11 includes monitoring camera 11a taking a video, and image input apparatus 11b encoding a video and transmitting the video to network 14.
Video monitoring terminal 12 includes image output apparatus 12a that receives video from network 14 and that decodes the video, monitor 12c that displays the decoded video, and control panel 12b that sets a frame rate defining the number of transmission frames per second and that sends the set value to central monitoring control apparatus 13 and monitoring camera terminal 11.
Central monitoring control apparatus 13 includes image output apparatus 13a that receives a video signal from monitoring camera terminal 11 and that decodes the video signal, monitor 13c that displays the decoded video, monitoring control apparatus 13j that receives the setting information from video monitoring terminal 12, that stores the frame rate and each connection destination representing which video monitoring terminal 12 monitors video transmitted from which monitoring camera terminal 11, and that monitors the communication state of a video signal, and control panel 13b that sets the frame rate and each connection destination representing which video monitoring terminal 12 monitors video transmitted from which monitoring camera terminal 11 in central monitoring control apparatus 13.
Upon reception of a request to set a new monitoring condition (a connection destination or a frame rate) from video monitoring terminal 12, monitoring control apparatus 13j determines whether it is possible to set the condition, sends the setting information to video monitoring terminal 12 and monitoring camera terminal 11, and thereby manages the transmission capacity of network 14 (for example, see Patent Literature (hereinafter, abbreviated as PTL) 1).
FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an outline configuration of monitoring camera terminal 11. In FIG. 2, monitoring camera terminal 11 includes monitoring camera 21 that captures monitoring video, encoder 22 that encodes a video signal, transmission section 23 that transmits a video signal to the network, and region division section 30 that specifies the importance of monitoring for each monitoring region. Monitoring camera terminal 11 thus enables encoding and transmission according to the importance of regions in the monitoring video.
Region division section 30 includes display section 27 that displays a moving image to be transmitted, input section 26 that includes a pointing device, such as a mouse, and that specifies a region and importance within an image, storing section 25 that holds the inputted region information and importance information, and combining section 24 that displays the region information and the importance by superimposing on an image as a difference in the brightness of the image.
Encoder 22 performs encoding using a different compression ratio for each region according to the region information and importance information stored in storing section 25 (for example, see PTL 2).